system in the world. our bill provides critical safety enhancements and grows america's aviation work worse and invest in airports and clear for advancing aviation, improves the public's flying travelling experience and assures a healthy general aviation sector for years to come. again, i thank nigh my colleagues in the committee and look forward to the vote later today and encourage my colleagues to work hard to see that we get this completed in the next few days. mr. chairman, mr. president, i yield the floor. >> mr. president, i come to the floor today in support of the f.a.a. reauthorization act of 2024. this has been a truly bipartisan, bicameral endeavor and that's how it should be. it's taken longer than we hoped, but the final product is worth it. this bill would empower the

f.a.a. to aggressively address the safety crisis. make our aviation system more accessible for passengers will disabilities. provide historic investments and enhance our nation's capacity to recruit and train the next generation of aviation worker do it without weakening down the post covid safety systems including pilot safety standards. there are many important provisions in this bill, but i want to highlight a few today. this bill takes important steps to address critical safety challenges facing our aviation system. during the pandemic, retirements and buyouts gained critical experience from our aviation work force both in the federal agencies like the f.a.a. and n.t.s.b. as well as in the commercial aviation sector. the post covid surge stretched the remaining aviation. near misses and close calls became so frequent that the

f.a.a. was forced to convene a safety summit. despite this the close calls keep happening over and over and over again. just last week, a swissair flight had to abort takeoff at jfk when four other planes were crossing the runway at the same time. and a southwest jet crossed as a jetblue flight was taking its takeoff roll. the need for congress to act is urgent and this bill takes important steps to address safety critical challenges. importantly, our bill also preserves an important pillar of the post safety systems, the 1500 hour rule for first officer flight training. as both a commercial and a private pilot, i know how critical real world experience is in the cockpit. it can mean the difference between life and death. a demand for air travel continues to grow, we will continue to lead more pilots.

but putting safety first demands that congress also rejects industry efforts to lower pilot qualification standards and that's why i worked so hard to make sure that our bill left the 1500 rule intact. air traffic controllers and surface detection is a key component of the authorization bill, also, and our legislation will give a much needed boost to our air traffic work force. coming out of the pandemic, our facilities are understaffed and our controllers are overworked. last year, only three of 313 air traffic facilities nationwide had enough controllers to meet staffing targets. while controllers are working 60 hours a week to keep up, this is dangerous. these are highly stressful, safety critical jobs under the best of circumstances. growing this work worse is a safety imperative and this bill takes aggressive steps to do so

and set a minimum target equal to the number of air traffic controllers our economy can accommodate and a more accurate staffing model going forward to assure there will be enough to meet the growing demand and keep the flying public safe. the bill will offer expanned deployment of service detection technology, to help prevent collisions. our bipartisan compromise advances passenger safety, requiring the f.a.a. to finally update aircraft evaluation standards to account for real world conditions. federal regulations require that in the event of an emergency, passengers can be evacuated from an aircraft within 90 seconds, however, recent f.a.a. in-person evacuation simulations used only able bodied adults under the age of 60 in groups of just 60 on a plane with no carry-on baggage and no one under the

age of 18. typically you'd see twice that number of passengers and also see a couple of backpacks, maybe 100, and senior citizens, children and perhaps folks with disabilities, too. all of these were left out of the simulation. we don't know if an aircraft can be evacuated in 90 seconds in real world conditions and that's what's so dangerous. the miracle on the hudson took more than twice that long to evacuate. three minutes. in january, when japan airlines crew miraculously managed to vacancy nearly 400 people from a burning airbus a-350. took 18 minutes from the point of impact and overall five minutes from the point when the plane had stopped moving n2016 took more than 16 minutes to evacuate a 757 atto at o'hare

airport. and the bill before us today, includes a provision, senator baldwin and i championed, requiring the f.a.a. to do just that to consider other real world conditions like the presence of children, seniors, and passengers were disabilities. it will make much needed progress in transforming commercial air travel to be safer and more accessible for passengers will disabilities. i was proud and honored to work with individuals and organizations in the disability community when drafting this portion of our legislation. and while we still have a long way to go to ensure equal access for millions of people with disabilities when flying, if passed, our f.a.a. reauthorization act would be one of the most significant leaps taken towards improving the air travel experience for the disability community. our bill works on a year's long efforts by my colleague senator

baldwin and i would like to thank her for her work on the act, for the disability community for years and happy to say that several important provisions from that baldwin bill are included in this reauthorization, includes a new grant program to upgrade airports to make them more accessible for passengers with disabilities. and two bi-cameral bills and i worked on with senators thune and peter, and the aviation for consumers accurate which i worked on. i want to thank my colleagues across the aisle and in the house for working with me and showing even in this divisive political moment we can and we must still legislate in a bipartisan fashion on issues that impact americans throughout every inch of this conduct, in --

country in states that are red and blue. this bill will help to grow the next group of pilots and technical workers by expanding the work force development grant program. this is critical to meet future demand, which is expected to grow tremendously. the enplanements that we saw will grow to 1.1 trillion enplanements by 2024. i want to thank senators moran, klobuchar, thune, kelly, fisher, warnock cavanaugh for working on these grants and special thanks to senator moran, a pleasure to work with and also to my colleagues in the house and especially to our chairwoman of the committee who has been so generous in working with me as a subcommittee chair. while this initiative may be

relatively new in its short history proven popular with training institutions with demands for training grants outstripping supply. our bill will strengthen capabilities of our nation's aviation and training organizations with the goal of successfully recruiting and preparing the next generation of american aviation workers. before leaving, i want to say a brief word about boeing, a company with a proud heritage in american aviation. this bill does not fully address the many vexing issues that have come to light since a door plug blew out mid flight in january of this year. congress must look more closely at these issues and look at what additional legislation may be needed. at chair cantwell indicated we'll have oversight and that makes time and this bill has urgent safety risks. we will continue